Look, it's ANOTHER trip report! 9 days after we got back from Charleston, I abandoned Ben and Papaya and set out to Europe with my mom.
Traveling with my mom has a few pretty sweet benefits, because she's Diamond Platinum Elite 1000 Level or something with Delta. I hoped this would lead to a first class upgrade, but alas, they seem to be kind of stingy with those on international flights. We did get access to the Virgin Atlantic lounge for free both ways, though, which turned out to be extremely fancy. They told us to be at JFK three hours before the flight and it took about twenty minutes to get through security, so we had plenty of time to enjoy the amenities.
We had eaten breakfast at the hotel but got some additional food in the lounge, mainly because it was free.
Then we flew to London! We arrived in the evening, which turned out to be a million times better than the early morning arrival I've experienced on every other trip to Europe. We found a restaurant just down the street from our hotel that was still open at 10:00pm and had some dinner and wine, and then went back to the hotel and went to sleep. I took pictures of all the wine so I could look it up later. This one is apparently not available in the United States.
We stayed at the Doubletree Hyde Park, near Notting Hill Gate. (Second benefit of traveling with mom: all hotels were free through her Hilton Honors points!) This is the same neighborhood where Ben and I stayed a few years ago so I was sort of familiar with it and knew there were good tube connections nearby. Since our first morning there was the same day as the big market at Portobello Road, we went over to check it out.
We got over there fairly early but by 10:00 it was totally packed - very touristy but fun to see. We both bought small crossbody purses which turned out to be perfect for the rest of the trip, as they were very lightweight.
Oddly almost all the pictures I took are of food. POTATOES.
More food.
Here's a giant thing of paella!
Then we went back to the hotel to put on some fancier clothes, and headed into Kensington Gardens for high tea at The Orangery, which was built by Queen Anne as a conservatory in the early 1700s.
We got legitimate British Pimm's cups!
And the waiter offered to take our picture without us even asking for it.
Look at all this stuff! We had no trouble finishing it off.
Then we walked through Kensington Gardens and around the palace.
This is the famous gates where the memorials to Diana were, but see behind it where there's the wall with the guard station at the corner? THAT'S WHERE WILL AND KATE AND HARRY LIVE. They are really serious about you not taking pictures or anything in that area. I was hoping for a glimpse of Harry but alas, did not get one.
After going back to the hotel and changing back into jeans, for some reason we walked the entire way through the park from our hotel to Buckingham Palace.
And then down through St. James' Park to Trafalgar Square, and popped into the National Gallery for a snack and the National Portrait Gallery to look at a few pictures. Although we were already pretty tired, we then decided to set out on Rick Steves' historical walk of The City of London, which turned out to be insanely long and detailed. But we learned lots of things about London.
This is Somerset House, a big palace right on the Thames. Before we left I had just finished reading about the big palaces lining the Thames because one of them was mentioned on Downton Abbey recently! Most of them were torn down after World War I.
This is the Royal Courts of Justice, their highest civil court building.
This is Samuel Johnson's cat, Hodge. I am still not entirely clear on who Samuel Johnson is.
The walking tour went all the way past St. Paul's and to the Monument, but we didn't make it to the end because we ran out of time.
We met up at a very old and atmospheric pub called Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese with my high school friend Fred and his husband Will. You may remember Fred from when we met up with him in Denmark. I had not seen him for nearly twenty years before September. I guess now Fred and I are going to be the type of friends who meet up for coffee and dinner in various European cities every six months. It was crazy packed and the service was terrible, but Fred assured me the service is terrible nearly everywhere in the UK. We enjoyed some beers and fish & chips and great conversation, and then we took the tube back to the hotel to rest our feet! We covered a lot of ground on our first day in London - I thought surely it would be the most walking we'd do the entire trip, but little did I know the death marches to come.
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